


So Long We Become the Flowers

by transdimensional_void



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Death, Grief, Immortality, M/M, Post-Series, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 09:20:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14161671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transdimensional_void/pseuds/transdimensional_void
Summary: "We lay here for years or for hoursYour hand in my handSo still and discreetSo long we become the flowers"********************************************Songfic for Hozier's "In a Week"





	So Long We Become the Flowers

 

It’s morning, and he’s still here.

 

He’s laid out on the grass, wet with dew beneath his still body. He’s lain there all night, watched mists rise from the lake to roll across the meadows and out among the trees. Watched tails of wispy cloud drift across the stars, cold overhead. There was no moon. Just wind to shiver the trees and chill his skin.

 

He’s watched the sun rise, as though the earth can just go on. As though he can just go on.

 

Brilliant colors had seeped into the sky, first a pale purple in the east that grew to luminous pink, throbbing orange and angry red, spreading on toward the west, dragging the sun along behind.

 

It hangs above him now, higher than the tops of the trees. A huge, glowing eye, looking down at him and the grass and the lake and everything. It feels as warm as ever. Looks as bright as ever. The sun that Arthur will never see.

 

Birds have sung, uncertainly at first, then bursting forth into full morning song. He’s heard the dry rustle of insects in the grass around him. Saw two pairs of yellow eyes pass in the dark last night.

 

It’s all here, every little detail, except for the most important one.

 

He’s here, too. He can feel cool air fill his lungs and then seep warmly out through his nose, one breath at a time. His eyes still blink. His heart thuds dully in his chest. When he tells them to, his fingers curl.

 

Beneath his body, the grass must be crushed. How long would he have to lie here, he wonders, for the grass to suffocate and die completely? How long would he have to lie here, he wonders, in order to die himself?

 

He’s lain upon this grass before, naked to the air, skin flushed and warm and sated. It isn’t far from home, this spot, just a couple hours journey on horseback, a little longer on foot. He’s come here before, and rolled, happy and heedless, in this grass, and fallen down upon it afterward to catch his breath. He’s known the most exquisite joy lying in this grassy meadow on the shores of this lake.

 

There had been two of them here then.

 

There had been two of them when he came here yesterday too.

 

He lies alone now, one living body. One body that could lie upon this grass for an eternity and never rot. Never become a corpse. Never give itself as food for the insects and the animals and the earth. Never become the soil to feed the flowers that will bloom here come the spring.

 

Once, when they’d lain here before, he’d imagined that. As a warm hand had searched and sought his own amongst the blades of grass, he’d thought how they might lie here forever together. Someone would stumble across them, in a week, a month, a year, find their corpses or their bones, a king and his servant rendered to the same soil, two bodies slowly joining with one another one final time.

 

The hand in his had grown slack after a while, and he’d felt himself drifting as well. They’d both slept here then, only to wake in the afternoon.

 

It is fate’s last cruel insult that this time they can neither sleep nor wake together.

 

Why has he been so singled out for such a punishment? Hasn’t he done his duty? Hasn’t he saved Camelot? Hasn’t he earned the right to sleep now beside his king?

 

He lies in the grass on the shores of the lake and waits as midday creeps up on the morning. The early cool gives way to a breathless heat. His body is warm, living, yearning for death like a lover yearns for an absent beloved.

 

 

*

 

 

*

 

 

*

 

A thousand years and a thousand times he’s lain upon this grass. And every day of it he’s felt his heart throb like a wound, pounding away its work inside his chest. Ceaseless. Unending.

 

He’s seen the night come and go, seen the sun come and go, seen the flowers come and go, seen the world come and go.

 

The birds sing for a year or two and then their tiny bodies fall and other birds come to take their place.The foxes cry and mate and hunt and they too fall, the flesh growing cold, the bones cracking and disintegrating, the fur scattering on the wind. Cows and sheep wander past with their handlers and disappear. A century later, a different herd or flock will shuffle past.

 

The trees here look so young to him, the descendants of trees he has watched grow tall then wither and die. Even the sky itself has changed. The stars have shifted into new positions. The air has grown hazier, the moon more yellow. But he is still the same, the only thing out of step with the tumult of nature all around him.

 

Once a year, he lies here, feels the same damp grass beneath him, hears the lapping of the lake. He lies all night and sees its mists rise and fill the forest. The memories of the joys his body felt here have grown ancient. The land has forgotten, but he cannot forget.

 

Two bodies lying bare and weary in the grass beside a lake, fleshly hungers sated for a time. Two heart beats slowing. Two chests heaving ever-softer breaths. Two hands clasped. Two ancient lives.

 

Now his memory holds a hundred lives. Too many. Too much.

 

He is so very tired. Hasn’t he earned his rest and more? He lays himself out on the grass and turns to watch a new sun ripple across the water.

 

He closes his eyes and imagines being home again. Home, here in this grass, with five warm fingers curled inside his hand and soft, warm breath tickling his ear. Home, with a cold body lying in the grass beside him, still and lifeless, waiting to render its flesh back to the earth. Home, his body become the soil, their bodies food for foxes and buzzards, their bodies food for flowers, their bodies together once more in the belly of the earth.

 


End file.
